lazybox | [voicetest] it's this guy

"...Hades?" Era repeats in query, curling the syllables on her tongue in a way that is more Amaurotine than Eorzean.

The child gives her something to focus on and she is eager to take it. Anything to stop the tumultuous spiral of emotions inside of her in this moment, however briefly. He wears a mask and robe like all the others, but does not ... feel like the others.

The shape of his jaw is more defined. Vaguely familiar — though that does not mean much right now, when the world around her all feels the same.

"I am..." How to explain without explaining? Era does no lie, and will not start now. Eventually she tugs her knees to her chest, settling into a more comfortable position.

"I am."

There need be no further explanation. If she seems lonely it's because she is.

"...The better question, rather, is why you can," he says, finally, looking at the ground instead of her (not that there is an easy way to tell, sometimes). "Incomplete as you are, even possessed of the power you call the Echo..."

It shouldn't be possible.

"The soul remembers what the mind forgets," he says, quietly and more to himself than to her. "How long? Longer than any history that yet remains on the Source can yet recall. Longer than I often care to."

Allag crumbled and fell three thousand years ago, and practice brings with it speed, in bringing about Rejoinings as in all things. He closes his eyes, fingers tapping against his chin as though the calculation takes actual effort, instead of being something he knows (as well as) (better than, after so long without hearing it) his own name.

"Fourteen millennia, give or take a century or three. Not that the precise number truly matters much to you, does it?"

[Ah, a victory. Dakki nods and smiles as he takes a sandwich, not really noticing that he hadn't been at all choosy. Nor really noticing that a handkerchief has apparently appeared from nowhere. Such a thing is... on theme for him. Consistent with the guise he has chosen for himself. It fits him, the object and the action.

Though something else about him still seems ill-worn and out of sorts. All his slouching and strolling and eye-rolling had felt like some sort of performance he was making, at first. A grand show of how little he cares, when he actually cares very, very deeply. But the weight on his shoulders....

She looks away for the moment, gazing out at the citizens below, legs swinging absently.]

I suppose it's cooperation. I'm not sure how much help you're actually being.

[She attempts to say it with a straight face, and almost manages it. The little upturn of her tone and quirking of her lips betrays that she's not entirely serious. Just a bit serious. A small amount. They've yet to proceed on to the Rak'tika Greatwood, after all. He has yet to perform any particularly kind deeds.]

Children. They'd always adored children, the unbridled delight in creating the most fantastical creatures just to hear the shrieks of joy. Too many tails, luxurious fur, gleaming horns. The children had so loved them, hadn't they? They'd also adored Lahabrea's spectral hooved beasts and made one with fur and scales and horns and fangs and somehow they'd never heard the end of it for that slight. A scandal. So offended but they'd been proud of the amalgamation anyway.

"I..." Memories spilled through her and she felt too full. Always too full. She clung to that hand, clutching it tight as her heart struggles against the strain her body is under. Everything hurts so much, she can barely think. It was never so bad as this. Never. Yet for a moment she recalled a blinding, terrifying light and then shattering like so much glass and she clung to him, huddled against his solidity as if it would shelter her from the horrible feelings that beat at her.

"I fed them." Ala Mhigo. Doma. Ishgard. Ul'dah. Places and ages and she ground her teeth, keening as too many places and faces and names, whens and wheres bleeding into one another and she was burying her face against his knees for shelter as her mind insisted they were surrounded by ruins and flames and not cold, cool light filtered through malms of water and air. Eons and seconds and minutes and years condensing until they knew they'd been so desperate to stop the tears and the night terrors and the crying they'd have given anything to make it right, to end it, the spinning of beasts and creatures and blankets and shelters wasn't enough. It wasn't enough how many had to die before it was right and they'd begged and shouted and the fighting had been horrible.

All of it was horrible.

The laughter had died as easily as that. In fire and flame and smoke and ash and the sound of terrified sobbing. Yet it was their turn now, broken and twisted and all wrong, all wrong all wrong all wrONG—they were clinging too tight to him. They knew that, but everything was wrong and they couldn't breathe and this shell was horribly uncomfortable and they just wanted it over.

Why had everything turned out so wrong?

He simply nods his head as she says his name again. And when she admits to the loneliness... His shoulders slump, just a little, posture now even more like his older counterpart.

(Because that's who, and what, he is. A child too young to have any titles or pretenses to maintain, rather than the man who cast all of them aside. The end as the beginning.)

"I was supposed to meet a friend of mine," he says. It's awkward, a child's attempt at sympathy. "But I don't think they're going to be here."

He leans forward, masked face twisting around to look at her. "You're not from around here, right? I've never seen anyone like you."

"Why do you say that?"

Era knows his friend will not be here, but a shade would have no such knowledge nor inclination. His question gives her further pause, as she doesn't know quite how to answer.

"I'm from very far away," she says. "From very far down the stream of time."

The essence of arcanima is academia. The pursuit of knowledge, no matter how hurtful or disruptive. The acceptance of uncomfortable truths.

Analyze.

This city felt familiar to her, though she had never seen anything like it in her relatively short life. The language, which she certainly had never encountered before, was likewise known to her. The magics of creation utilized here - also unfamiliar, but so similar to what she used daily.

Hypothesize.

1: This place was familiar to her because she was experiencing it through Emet-Selch's memories, a much-diluted effect of the Echo caused by his truly ancient origins and the power he wields.

Probability: 10%

2: It was familiar because she had dreamed of it, after seeing the pictures on the wall of the Ronkan temple. The dream had been flavored by Emet-Selch's own storytelling, and so all of it is really his fault.

Probability: 30%

3: These were her own memories, from long ago - perhaps before she was even born as she currently is. The Echo wasn't working because it couldn't show her her own past.

Probability: 50%

4: Moogles. Somehow.

Probability: 10%

With no better than a half-chance at discerning the truth, she could only experiment with each theory in turn. The first didn't hold water - Emet-Selch would have recognized instantly if she were invading his memories in such a way. Would he tell her if he did? ...Probably. He had not lied to her before now, after all, even if he never told her all of the truth.

The second was more palatable, but still not likely. And it didn't explain the failure of the Echo. Dismissable on that ground alone.

And while she would love to blame it on the moogles... she really hadn't seen more than a handful of the damn things since being summoned to this world.

That left an uncomfortable truth as the only option she had enough data to examine... and the pieces fit too well.

"I've been here before..." She looks up at him, her eyes filled with a mix of emotions - pain, fear, sadness, and a lingering melancholy. "Fourteen thousand years..."

There's an actinic flash, the crackle of energy, and six points of light form around her. Three of them burn far, far too brightly - the others mere motes by comparison. An all-too-familiar diagram describes itself on the floor, linking the points in six equidistant rings at the points of a star - two triangles overlapped. Static crackles between the three bright points, and she screams as it leaps at her, striking her to the floor. What should have been blood but wasn't passes her lips as she retches, spattering the floor.

How easily a blessing can prove to be a curse in disguise.

The greatest of journeys begins with the smallest of steps.

[Said before oh-so-delicately wiping a bit of mustard off his lips. That is what napkins are for, after all.

...Perhaps he'll take another, in a minute or two.]

Though that does beg the question of why you sought me out, considering exactly how keen you and your companions have been on not cooperating.

"And clothed them, and loved them. Where there are the first orphans, there must too be the first orphanage."

He continues to stroke her head, even with her hair now safely out of the way if the Light takes her again (his clothes, on the other hand, are of no real consequence).

"Breathe, my dear," he says, voice for the first time truly gentle, words for the first time truly meant. Because the person he is remembering, the reason he has let them go unremembered, unmourned as betrayer, for so long...

"Focus on your breathing, and let everything else go in and out as the tide."

(How many times, did he say those words to calm one of their number, in those days, when all hope was lost? How many times, just to the person whose echo shakes with pain beneath his hands right now?)

[ The glamour glitch had been going on for most of a day now, which was wearing in a number of ways. It meant time was running out, for the power to be getting this bad. It meant that most of everything was nanofilm, which even for Peryn - who'd seen more than a fair bit of Allagan technology in her time - was unsettling. It also meant there was almost nothing else to look at, besides it, her own glowing violet body, or the monsters that roamed the halls.

Overall it just left her very, very tired. Especially after a shift at trying to decode the collar fluid with the other residents.

Floor One-hundred-and-one is where she takes her respite. Normally she'd be somewhere with more people, but... Not right now. Right now the lone living sapling was more of a comfort, to open her eyes and see something alive. Not to mention the hanging gardens were gorgeous when the glamour actually worked. Part of her hoped that she'd open her eyes and see them, even if she knew it was just an illusion.

She knows better by now than to get complacent though, and even with her eyes closed, her ears are still pricked for sounds of nearby movement - hostile or otherwise. ]

He is silent at first, as she repeats the number, his eyes closing against the memories. "Fourteen thousand years," he agrees. "To repair that which was destroyed in the blink of an eye by comparison, and still the work is not done."

If he's honest, which he always is, sometimes he doubts that it ever will be. A doubt not in Zodiark, for he is incapable of such, but...

How is it impossible to not doubt, especially now, with she who championed over Lahabrea not once but twice before him? Who, even now, refuses to stand still long enough to just die?

They would be best served to postpone all of their plans until some mortal end came to Hydaelyn's champion, and to work frantically in the few years that follow, before her next incarnation becomes old enough to be a threat. But timing is a tricky thing, when dealing with multiple shards.

When he opens his eyes, he can see it, Hydaelyn's blessing spread just to the reach of his feet. Water, earth, and ice blinding, the elements of stagnation.

(He could help. But he cannot. That which binds him is as an old companion, a faith that is not faith but unbreakable nonetheless. He cannot doubt, cannot betray it.)

(But for the first time, he finds that he resents it.)

"And how very close you must be to what you were, to have held on this long..." he muses. "So very close."

"It's just a feeling," he says. "Like there's something gone that won't come back."

Even children are sensitive to the aura of anxiety that pervades the Amaurot in which they stand, on the cusp of the end of days. Even children who do not belong here, but in a time even further back, when all was peaceful and harmonious.

But a child is still a child, and there's a brightness in his words at her response. "Are you a time traveller? That's supposed to just be theoretical - most theories say that you can't change the past, because it would cause instability in the future, but..."

He stops, and seems to shake himself under the hood. "My apologies, I'm sure that's rude. If you were a time traveller, you wouldn't be able to tell me." Said with all the certainty of children who know what the Rules are. He nods to himself. "But I can show you around, if you like," he offers after a moment.

[Even with the glamour off, she likely recognizes the sound of the footsteps approaching her. Where others find the glitches uncomfortable, there is one person who has thought nothing of them since that first catastrophic breakdown, when all was revealed to the truth.

To Emet-Selch, who for so many centuries has been among fellows who were nothing more than souls and aether that happened to inhabit flesh, none of this is new. And where others would rely on the relative size of the frame that houses what's really Peryn to recognize her, he has no need of any such thing. Has not, in the entire time that they've been here.

The footsteps continue until he's standing beside her, the same shade of violet, eyes also on the sapling in front of them.]

Such a small thing, to be all that lives in this world.

"Life is like that, sometimes."

There is that feeling of familiarity again. Sadness, too; a deep-seated grief that weighs heavy on her sundered soul. This boy said his name is Hades, and it cannot be coincidence.

"Time is not always linear, nor concrete. Who can say for certain? Perhaps a change in the past simply causes a new tributary to form, branching off in a new direction, leading toward a different end. Safe, and separate, linked only by a far off point far behind it."

But she is no specialist in the concept of time and space, despite having traveled through it.

"If I could promise that our interaction would be of no consequence, what would you like to know?"

"I didn't....I didn't mean for this. Not like this." That much she—they?—knew. Knew in their very bones. She couldn't remember what they'd meant to happen, only that in the end, another lost life was one too many. Something that had lasted on and on and on as they dragged themselves through one battle and the next in an endless desire to stop it all until it had brought her here, trembling and trapped in a too-small vessel that was on the verge of blossoming into something beautiful in a terrible, horrific sort of way. Something she'd loathe more than this tiny vessel. At least this tiny form could feel still.

Too much. Not enough. An overwhelming feeling that left her anxiously grinding her teeth just to root herself to a sensation that wasn't pain. Focus on his hands in her hair, the ringing slowly fading as she listened to him, fighting past the horrible sound that filled her until his voice and her breathing and the rustling of his hand in her hair was what she could latch onto.

"Everything's in pieces, we've lost too many. I don't..." Closing her eyes to hide from the light, she rubs her face against his knees, grinding teeth so hard it hurts as her ears tuck back tight. There weren't the right words. She tried to find them but they slipped through her claws and she was left with an unhappy flap of an ear and a wordless moan of discomfort as she hid her face against him and willed it all to settle itself.

Breathe.

He was right. He usually was, wasn't he? There was too much missing, too many things crowded in too tightly to piece together, but in that moment she wanted stillness. Quiet. Some manner of peace that didn't involve her body trying to tear itself apart from the inside or the world trying to destroy itself. So she clung to him instead, taking solace in the familiar sensation of his hands in their hair until the painful tension bled from her limbs and left her exhausted and limp against him.

"I only meant to protect them." Protect you. They didn't know if they spoke it at all, or if only pieces of it were mumbled against his robes, only that it was a bitter feeling that the urge to save, to protect, had only led to so much fighting it had blotted out countless more lives. A bitter, terrible medicine that left them aching from the cruelty of it.

"That's the second-most popular scholarly opinion," he says, and there it is, that slight touch of arrogance, though it's not so much looking down on her, at this age, as it is being proud of himself for knowing.

But at her question, he goes quiet. "I wouldn't know where to start," he says. "Everyone is so nervous suddenly..."

His hands fold over his knees. "I want to hear that everything will be okay, but not if it's a lie. My friend and I promised we wouldn't lie to each other. It's important."

Close... close to what? The answer dances just beyond her reach, just outside the circle of Her blessing. Why was it beyond her reach? Had she not the will, the power to move beyond that frail barrier?

Tears that are not tears stream down her cheeks as she looks up through the light haze at Emet-Selch. For an instant, she sees not the old emperor of Garlemald, but... someone else. Someone much more similar to the masked apparitions that fill the city around them.

Someone at once familiar and alien to her.

She reaches out a hand - the dark motes flicker ever so slightly brighter, but the Light will not be broken so easily. She screams again as it hammers on her, trying to strike her down, to mold her to its will...

Wait. Hammering. Molding. Shaping. The elements bending mere matter to another's will. The concepts of synthesis, the methods of arcanima.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed... but it can be changed. Equivalent exchange, the core principle of alchemy. Work with the grain, not against it - let the materials move as they need to. Shape what you need to fit the situation. Carpentry and smithing. Weave lesser parts to make a greater whole...

She stops fighting. A high, crystalline chime rings out as aether flows from the Light elements into her, and then out to the Dark, and Balance is achieved.

Light cannot exist without Dark. Nor can Dark exist without Light. Order and Chaos define one another.

He wants to take those words as truth. Wants to believe that this broken thing is something more than a shell of the person he once knew, spitting up memories in her dying gasp the way Allagan magitek now spits up errors half the time when it will function at all. He wants so desperately to believe it's true, that there was never any harm meant, that they were all doing what they thought was right.

(What's the harm in believing it? But it edges close, to the place in his mind where his god belongs, and he knows it. He doesn't know if the peace that believing it brings him is worth the effort.)

His hand strokes back along her pinned-back ears once more, as his other hand tightens its grip around her fingers. Somehow, fool that he is, he hasn't let go.

"We've lost too many," he agrees. And she doesn't know the depth of it, in the state she's in, doesn't remember, how the Convocation tried to stand against the Sundering, as the world fell apart around them. She can't remember, will never remember even if everything else returns, because they were not there when they should have been. They were already gone, when the hammer of light fell.

Is it wrong of him, to not want to lose this person again?

"Keep breathing," he says, instead of thinking too deeply on it. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend, for a little while, that it isn't Hydaelyn's champion at his feet. And then ome of the pain, the strain of acting contrary to his god's will by offering His enemies comfort, goes away.

[By all rights, a world very nearly consumed by light shouldn't be something that holds any interest for the Organization. Without any Heartless - and precious little Darkness to sustain them, should they actually succeed in creating any - there's hardly any way to create any of the various things they happen to be looking for. Especially when it's clear enough that this world is already hovering on the brink. Still, it makes for an interesting case study, and the Organization's plans are in enough of a lull right now that it's not like there's any pressing need for Xigbar to do more than check in periodically.

Plus he always has been prone to curiosity, and today that curiosity has led him down into the depths of the ocean. The light might not bother him the way it would an Ascian, but he figures if the local heroes are going to go to all the trouble to bring air to the bottom of the ocean he might as well check it out.

(Of course, he also steers clear of same. No need to have to deal with more explanations then are strictly necessary.)

In the end, it's the massive cityscape tucked away under the sea that draws him in. He's definitely not been invited - indeed, has no idea it might be invite-only - but there are very few places that are barred to a man of his abilities. Which is to say that there is absolutely a Nobody wandering through the remembered streets of Amaurot, taking in the sights without so much as a care in the world.]

[hit me with what you got, i genuinely have no idea how this should shake out]

He can but watch and wait, as her aether redistributes, balances itself. And there is something entirely different in his expression, if she has the faintest gap in her concentration to look.

Pride. Satisfaction. You were worthy after all.

(How many times, did he watch his old friend approach the edge of disaster, leaning over into the abyss, only to suddenly tilt back, violently, and have everything fall into place?)

"A bit rudimentary, but it will do," he says, and for all the condescending meaning of the words, there's none of it in the tone. He actually sounds genuinely, unrepentantly pleased, as though this possibility is as acceptable an outcome to him as another Rejoining.

(There are other shards, other plans, and the best of mortals who stands before him is mortal yet.)

[ She opens her eyes, not quite turning to look over at Emet-Selch yet. ]

What does that say of us, then?

[ There's barely anything of a rebuke in her voice - almost more of a light teasing if not for the exhaustion and sort-of familiarity behind it. There's been no point continuing the fights from home here; never has been.

Not that she'd be inclined to disagree with the idea that they weren't exactly "alive" here. ]

It's young. Hopefully it will have the chance to grow.

He has certainly twisted her arm with his answer. By saying nothing, Era is admitting that everything will not be okay, and if she reassures him it would be a lie, which she cannot abide by.

"Listen carefully, my dear little Hades." Her voice is soft and quiet; soothing and melodic. "Everything will not be okay. Things will be different, and perhaps disappointing, but..."

She curls her tail back and forth, back and forth. Thoughtful. Anxious. She has never been good with children.

"This world is ending, and from its death fourteen more shall be birthed. But you will be brave, and you will survive. Your kin will live on in different form, with no memory of this time and no capacity to create life as you do now."

Era turns to him fully now, eyes an ethereal blue made all the more so in the lights of the city.

"I say this not to frighten you, but to offer you hope. That regardless of this world crumbling around you, you will survive, and life will continue to flourish. A different definition of life than what you know now, but no less beautiful for it."

[Considering the sort of attire that said heroes are prone to wearing, a man in a black coat with his face fully hooded fits in better among the specters than they do. Of course, he's still far too small, considering the scale of the place.

No, that's not what attracts the attention of the owner of this domain. A unusual aether signature is itself reason enough to investigate, but when you couple that with such a power as comes from beyond the Rift - beyond what even the Ascians consider the edge of the world, of all shards, even the Void - well.

He has not only the inclination to investigate, but a solemn duty, as one of the last remaining caretakers of this world. It's more likely that Xigbar will notice the new arrival, seated on the edge of a too-tall railing above him, from the warping and unwarping of space as the Ascian moves to observe more closely, than from any actual sound of his presence.

As least until he speaks up.]

And what do we have here? This is a private party.

Worthy? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She's not entirely certain what exactly she's done, at the moment. But the tears that fall now are genuine, and merely the salty water they should be.

"What fools we have been..." Slowly, she picks herself up, the black and white robes she's long worn as a personal choice a fitting symbol for what she's become. "Then and now, as ever. So many lives lost senselessly. So much destroyed by our own pride... none of us willing to admit we were all wrong." Finally, she looks up at Emet-Selch - no. Hades. She remembers the name, now, of her dearest friend from so long ago.

The friend she had betrayed, when she left the Convocation to lead those who balked at feeding their own to the godling they had fashioned for themselves.

[voicetest] it's this guy

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Tower of Animus AU

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject